Second Contact
by Gyptian
Summary: Kirk's gone into hiding, but Spock needs to find him, before the Orions come and destroy a pre-warp Earth. 21st century AU.
1. A Town in Georgia

**Second Contact**

Author: Gyptian

Rating: PG-13

Genre: AU, Action/adventure, Romance

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's note: This can be read as a standalone. If you'd like to read more, this is the main part in the series that is, in order, "Sarek's Log", "Abducted", "Challenge and Marriage" and "Like My Father". Thanks for all your reviews so far, everyone who's commented. It's very motivating!

Summary: A 21st century AU. The Orions are coming to Earth, but so are the Vulcans. While a fledgling Starfleet prepares to fight them off, Jim has gone into hiding with his team to continue the development of the first faster-than-light ship in a small town in Georgia. Spock finds him there and hopes to recruit him to convince humanity to accept Vulcan as ally. It may be Earth's only hope for survival.

/`/`/`/`/`

On the 5th of October 2043, a sunny autumn day, Doctor Leonard H. McCoy was officially free of his wife. It was also the day he was caught by a stranger who would become a friend by the name of James T. Kirk.

At 4 o' clock, he left his lawyer's office and found himself in want of a drink.

At 6 o' clock, he found himself in want of a fifth drink.

Somewhere between sundown and midnight, he stumbled over Kirk, who was exiting the library. "Watch where you're going!" came out as a gurgle. An arm around his chest had prevented him from face-planting on the pavement.

As a mark in his favour, Kirk sat him down on a bench and didn't call the police. "You're worse than my ex-stepfather."

"Just signed away my money, life and soul. Just got my bones left. Am allowed to be drunk."

"They healthy bones?" he was taking off McCoy's shoes and laying him down. Good man.

"Yeah, and I'd know. I'm a doctor."

"Then you've got more than the poor kids in Africa." His wallet and keys were taken from them. He made to grab them back, until he saw they were put into his shoes. Thoughtful. That only left him with his clothes and a light jacket.

"Don't talk ter me about poor kiddies over thattaway," he waved a flopping hand north-west. "Been there, healed 'em, donated ma T-shir'"

"Good of you."

That was the extent of his first meeting with Kirk, because now that he was horizontal and more or less comfortable, he proceeded to pass out.

/`/`/`/`/`

He woke up to find his shoes, keys and wallet missing. His head felt like it had exploded, but it had done so often enough that McCoy knew how to work around it by now. Move slow.

His phone had been left behind, in a inside pocket of his jacket, one he'd never used before or even knew existed. After a few panicky minutes of checking over his clothing and cursing the stranger who'd robbed him, he found it. Folded around it was a piece of paper, which read "John Smith", and a phone number. On the back it said, "You can pick up your stuff here. Mention the hydrangea bush."

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, winced at the sting of pain that sent through his head and dialed the number. "Jones," a cool female voice said on the other side of the line.

"Yeah, uh, hi. I, uh, my stuff was taken last night by a John Smith? I'd like to come pick them up. Something about a hydrangea bush."

He could hear muttering in the background. Then, "Excuse me a moment. Stay on the line." The last part said insistently enough to make him straighten up.

A door closed in the distance. Silence. A door _slammed. _He winced again. Footsteps.

"Yes, your shoes were dropped off here, with content. You can pick them up." She gave him the address of a pastel-pink two-bedroom place on the edge of town.

"Thank you," he said, because his mother had taught him to be polite to strangers. Strangers who were fellow victims in a prank.

He went to find a bathroom and some painkillers. If his night of sleeping like a drunk on a park bench and his barefoot walk of shame was going to be the talk of the town, he'd at least make sure his hair was combed and his scowl was suitably intimidating.

See if he touched a bottle outside the safety of his home again.

/`/`/`/`/`

"You disgust me, Kirk," Uhura announced.

She exited the elevator, the only entrance to their bunker. It was a large square room with floor-to-ceiling closets covering every wall and a large table in the middle. If they put away the benches, there would be space for their bed rolls on the floor should they have to hide here during an attack. They all sincerely hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Kirk shot her a grin. "Good day to you too, fair Uhura." In the safety of their bunker, they could use each other's names.

"Did you have to do that to a man already down on his luck?" She seated herself besides Scotty, who was already holding out a cup of coffee to her. "Ugh, reheated."

"It is never a bad time for a man to learn to drink responsibly." He turned back to his calculations. He and Chekov had bet the pick of the night's movie on finishing them first. They were checking the volume of several uneven cilinders that would fit inside each other like babushka dolls.

She snorted. "Every curtain twitched while he was walking down the street."

"See? I'm providing free entertainment for senior citizens." He turned over the page full of his uneven scrawl and started on the other side. Chekov was mostly staring at a near-empty page and magicking numbers around in his head.

"Kirk!" she snapped and loomed over him. "He got a call while he was at my place, telling him he'd lost his job because he was late for his shift three times in a row. They didn't believe him when he said he had to pick up his shoes." She slapped her hands over his notebook. "It was his dad calling, Jim, that he could come gather his personal belongings and last month's salary. Are you proud of yourself?"

He lifted his head. "Sounds like a nice family."

She growled at him. "Do you even care?"

"Yes. I left him his clothes." He pointed at her hands. "Do you mind? If Chekov wins we'll be watching another film noir tonight. And I still want to pick your brain afterward on how the hell we're going to communicate with aliens we don't understand."

She sank down onto the bench behind her. "I still think you're a slimy worm."

"But it's a worm that's in love with your brain and your nimble tongue and those long lines of perfection you call legs."

"Die in a fire, Kirk." A reluctant smile curled one corner of her lips. Scotty had quietly refilled her cup. She handed him the screwdriver he'd need next before he could say anything. He was disassembling a spare tablet.

"I shall obey your every command, my lady, and die a painful death to prove I lust after you so, so much."

"Is very respected literary tradition to die horribly after pining melodramatically after a beautiful lady," Chekov put in, who was still learning to make sarcastic comments and usually took a while to contribute to a conversation. Uhura toasted his attempt, as well as the fact that he'd finished his calculations while Kirk talked.

"I like you Chekov. I'll like you even more if you pick a movie with lots of car chases tonight."

"As you wish, my lady." She offered him another toast and sipped the reheated coffee. Kirk's scrawl increased in spikiness while he finished up his contribution so he and Chekov could swap and check each other's work.

An hour later, Sulu returned with a pot of freshly brewed coffee. He was summarily crowned king of the bunker. Chekov cut him a crown from the paper he hadn't used.

/`/`/`/`/`

McCoy was greeted by a sad-eyed father and a theatrically sniffing receptionist. "Spare me the lecture," he told them as he brushed past on his way to his office.

"Leonard," his father said, who'd never been able to tell when McCoy's temper was about to flare. "Be reasonable. You've been negligent in showing up on time for a while now. I've got patients waiting for hours for you to visit them. We're a highly respected private practice. Now I hear you've been running around town drunk or hung-over -"

McCoy whirled and socked him in the jaw. His father fell on his ass and he was on him in a blink, hands around his thick throat and shaking him until his flabby cheeks jiggled.

"That you kick me when I'm down, well, I almost expected it. That you supported my wife, when you know SHE cheated on ME is harder to take. But YOU let them TAKE MY LITTLE GIRL AWAY FROM ME without a peep and I WILL-"

He broke off when slender hands grasped his own. They pried him loose from his father, who fell over backwards like a sack of sand. He was purple and unconscious. McCoy let out a little whine and scrambled back.

"Oh God, I almost killed him, oh God, oh God, oh God." He clawed at his face. His hands were caught again. He looked up in the face of his guardian angel.

"Calm down, Leonard," the mirage said, in the same voice it had always done, the few times he'd needed to do a difficult operation and the one disastrous time he'd been flown to someone's ranch in a helicopter. He'd discovered his fear of flying.

He blinked, and discovered he had tears in his eyes. He blinked again and the mirage resolved into Christine Chapel's face.

"You need to pack your box and leave now, Len, before Maggie calls the cops. We could hear you out in the hallway." When he continued to look at her, not comprehending what she'd said, she pulled him up and sat him in a chair with a glass of water. She took the box that had been placed in the middle of the desk, like he needed the reminder, and started packing away the books and the photographs, his personal tablet computer and the collection of Mickey Mouses in the window sill. They were a favourite of Joanna's, she'd played hours with them every time she visited her father at the office.

He sat in the chair until she made him stand. He finally spoke, then. "I can't go, Christine. I don't even have anywhere to stay."

"Not everyone's deserted you, Len." She pointed at the box she'd put down by the door.

"You..."

"I quit. Ron and I already talked. You're welcome to the spare bedroom." She picked up her box and waited for him. She didn't say anything when he carefully put his father in a position in which he could breathe more easily. Nor when he picked Jocelyn's photo out of the box and put it back on the desk. Not even when he deliberately let the sharp end of a key trail over the antique wooden paneling in the hallway.

At the front desk, Maggie was touching a handkerchief to her eyes, taking care not to smear her make-up. She jumped when Leonard let his box thump down in front of her. "You'll find Doctor Horatio McCoy in my former office, Maggie," he said evenly. "Do not move him. If he doesn't wake up in fifteen minutes, call an ambulance. When he's awake, make him put ice on his throat."

"Yes Doctor," she squeaked. "Nurse."

/`/`/`/`/`

Wednesday morning found him having a late breakfast with Ron Hastings, who kept up a one-sided conversation from behind his newspaper. McCoy tuned in when the library was mentioned. "...some new guy'd been chatting up the biddies of the book-and-quilt club. He kept them all talking and laughing for ten minutes, then went straight into the stacks and came back with a book on glue, of all things."

McCoy crunched down on the last of his bacon. "Sounds like a real heartbreaker. What was he, seventy?"

The newspaper was closed and folded. "No, that's the oddest bit. Patrick said he was in his twenties. He stayed there the whole afternoon, reading books on all sorts of outlandish subjects."

McCoy's eyes widened. "I think I ran into him." He dropped the roll he'd been about to bite and scratched the stubble on his cheeks in thought. "He stole my shoes."

"Say what? Is he a thief?" Hastings looked ready to grab the phone.

"No, more like a brat. I got 'em back, but I had to walk across town in my socks."

"Huh." His friend drummed fingers on the table.

They both looked up when the kitchen door opened. Chapel stepped in with the groceries and a blush that wasn't from the cold. Her blonde hair lay tousled on her shoulders.

"Uh-oh," Hastings said, sounding amused for a man whose wife-to-be was near to fluttering her lashes at the stranger who followed her in. "Found yourself another gentleman for your collection, have you?"

"Just a nice young man who helped me carry my bags. I bought more than I thought." She took both bags from the man. He handed them to her without comment.

McCoy eyed him. He was the introverted type, impassive and inside too much to catch any real sun. Likely had some type of scientific degree. Baggy clothes and a beanie that was almost too large for his head made him look sloppy. "Did your mum knit that sweater?" he asked rudely, when the man's silence began to unnerve him.

A raised eyebrow was his reply. Cold-blooded bastard. "She did."

A clear tenor, McCoy noticed. He might be part of a choir. He ought to fit right in, in this nothing-place of a town.

"Never mind him," Chapel said. "Len, this is Spock. I ran into him at the supermarket. He was looking for someone and got lost. I didn't recognise the name, but I told him you were a Doctor and knew many people, so you might be able to help him." A pointed look told him he'd suffer if he didn't cooperate.

McCoy grunted. Tall, dark and weird turned to Chapel. "Miss, does that not mean I should pay him mind?" Instead of correcting him, she blushed some more. Beanie-head gazed down at him from behind a long, straight nose, like too many of his stuck-up ex-patients. "Doctor, have you heard of a man named John Smith?"

He was about to bark he hadn't, when he remembered the brat, and the note. It would be very satisfying to sic this weirdo on him in revenge. "Yeah, actually I do. Or, I know someone who knows where he is." He stood up and retrieved a crumpled ball from his jacket pocket. "Here, call this number."

The only reaction was a hand that snatched the note from his inhumanly quick and a wobble of wonky eyebrows as the note was read. The man left as he'd come in, without a word.

"Well!" Chapel exclaimed, hands set on her hips in the southern ma'am's clearest sign of outrage.

"Not so much of a gentleman after all?" Her fiance chuckled. He was gathering the dishes.

McCoy grabbed a cloth and attacked a yolk stain. "I don't understand what's so funny about your woman crushing on others willy-nilly."

Hastings made him surrender the cloth. "Not every admiring look makes for a cheated-on husband, old man."

"Yeah, yeah." McCoy leaned over the table, focusing on the grain in the wood. He found it was hard to breathe. "Sorry."

"No harm done, love." Chapel put a soft hand on his shoulder, rubbing. When he'd collected himself, he turned to look at his friends, lost.

"Right. _We _are going to look for a job," Chapel decided after a tense second. She turned to her fiance. "You are going to make sure you finish that book on time, because you're currently the only one of us with an income."

Hastings' eyes bugged out. "What?"

"I told you what Horatio was doing."

"Yeah, and we agreed Len could stay with us for as long as he liked. You never said anything about getting another job." He sighed. "You and your idealism. Brings home the lost and the chivalrous to feed them and quits her job in the name of friendship."

She raised her chin. "Precisely."

Hastings put an arm around each of them. "I guess we'll figure it out. Len's got you to cheer him up. You've got us to make fun of you. And I've got both of you to bug me if I'm lazing around." He pressed a kiss to Chapel's cheek and slapped McCoy on a shoulder and left for his shed-turned-office in the backyard.

Chapel threw a towel at McCoy and started on the dishes. "He was a bit pale, wasn't he?" she asked over the splash of water in the sink. "D'you think he left so suddenly because he was unwell?"

McCoy snorted. "After you told him I was a doctor and probably that you were a nurse yourself? That would be stupid." After he'd dried the plates, he said, "He did look a bit green around the gills. Y'think he's part alien?"

She ruffled his hair. "Don't you start that nonsense, McCoy."

"Or a goblin. A fancy one? A hobnobbin' goblin? A hobgoblin?" With each question, he retreated a step to get away from Chapel flicking suds at him.

You're such a folktale yourself sometimes, Len, you've got no right of speech."

/`/`/`/`/`

The second time McCoy met Kirk was that evening, when he was pulling an evening shift as a volunteer at a free clinic one town over. Here the poor went for things too simple for the hospital but too serious to let it heal on its own. Some rich folk came in, with complaints they didn't want their own doctor to see.

He'd just finished comforting a girl whose boyfriend'd refused protection and whose parents were threatening to kick her out. She'd come to him.

He found the blond-haired man leaning against the wall, hood of his shirt up over his head, barely able to hold himself upright. "Now who's drunk?" he asked him.

Kirk was staring after the girl. "You made a girl cry?"

"What made her cry is confidential, thank you very much."

"Oh." McCoy finally took pity on him and helped him drag himself into the room.

"So, did you want a detox or something?" McCoy turned to get out a form and a pen. Hardcopy was still considered proof, so he had to fill it in there first.

"_No._" Kirk said, pronouncing the letters almost seperately. "Had a bad reaction to cough syrup. Got dizzy." He rattled off the six-syllable name of a drug that had been on the market not two months and promised to cure the common cold, without a stutter.

"You got drunk, or dizzy, on that? That's insane."

The other man nodded once and let his head hang. "Yeah," he told the floor. "Got crazy allergies." He reached across McCoy's desk, turned the screen to him, brought up the page to the national medical archive and started to type, from the wrong side of the keyboard, the fifty-digit alpha-numerical code of his patient file. No one had ever remembered that, that McCoy knew of.

He put down the form so he could click through the file entitled "John Smith". "Twenty pages of information on your allergies alone. That's..."

"196 known allergies. Probably a lot more unknown." McCoy was distracted from his reading by two muddy boots that appeared on his desk. His scowl at least made them disappear, though the young man didn't look penitent in the least. "That's not why I came to you, Bones. It's getting better pretty fast. I could have slept it off."

"Bones," McCoy repeated, just to be sure he'd heard correctly. He turned off the screen.

"Yeah, Mr just-got-my-bones, right? So, Bones for short." He nodded and crossed his arms as if it made sense.

"Right." Perhaps it was time to pick his battles for the sake of expedience. "If you didn't come here 'cause you're drunk or to rub your irritating self in my face, what are you doing here?" He put his elbows on his desk and leaned forward.

Kirk mirrored him. "I need stitches." He shoved his hood down and turned his head around, so McCoy could seen what'd been hidden beneath it.

"How'd you manage that?" McCoy asked, so he wouldn't call the kid a thousand names for leading him by the nose for an entire conversation while he had a hole in his head. He stood and turned to a back closet with basic medical supplies, got out some disinfecting wipes and a pair of scissors, and threaded a needle onto some self-dissolving thread. Best invention ever: stitches that didn't need to be removed.

"I fell out of a tree because the alien you sent over to my house startled me."

In shock, McCoy pricked himself in the finger like a fairytale princess and proceeded to swear like a sailor. He grabbed his chair for support, needle still in his suddenly-sweaty hands and feeling like he'd nodded off and was having a nightmare. It wouldn't be the first time.

The bratty twenty-something in front of him had disappeared, and changed into a serious man who was sitting military straight in his chair, hands lying half-curled on his thighs. "I am Lieutenant James Kirk-"

"No."

"-son of Admiral Winona Kirk-"

"Please tell me you're having me on."

"- and Captain George Kirk, who died saving us from aliens abducting humans from Earth for purposes unknown -"

"No, no, just no."

"- and I found an alien on my doorstep today, while I'm supposed to be hiding from said aliens for very, very important and very, very classified reasons."

"I've died and gone to hell."

Kirk bared his teeth at that. "No more than the rest of us, if we don't succeed in kicking alien butt a second time."

He sat down in his chair now that the attack on his sanity seemed to be over. "Kill me now." He put his head between his knees.

"I can, if you want me to," was the answer, in such an even tone that McCoy had to look up to see that yes, he meant it. "Or you can tell me what happened, because it sounds like you didn't know what you were doing."

McCoy set his hands on his knees to lift his suddenly very heavy head. "I sent someone your way this morning who looked kind of odd, but that was all."

"I figured, or you really would be dead by now. Tell me everything, in detail, from the beginning."

McCoy did. After he'd taken care of the head-wound. Crazy or not, he was a doctor.


	2. Meeting a Human

**2: Meeting a Human**

Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Kirk could only meet up for a few hours each day to work on their project together, the rest had to be done individually. They needed to meet up without arousing suspicion. On Wednesday, their cover was crashing at Scotty's after a morning a jog.

Well, it had been a jog when they'd moved here, several days apart, a month ago. Scotty, Chekov and Uhura still set a comfortable pace, enjoying the scenery in the meantime.

Kirk tried to outrun his demons. Sweat stung his eyes and his emotions flowed through his veins, unlocked and funneled into physicial activity and out, out before it drove him over the brink.

Sulu kept up with him, as the only one who could.

By the time they'd hopped the fence to the backyard, Sulu knew enough to brace himself. Kirk took two breaths to regain himself and then bowled Sulu over with a shoulder to his solar plexus. They rolled together over the grass. They had learned, the hard way, not to use fists, instead they grappled in complex holds that smeared their faces with mud and their clothes with grass-stains.

Kirk had laundry duty on Wednesdays.

After an hour, they called a halt. Sulu refused the glass of lemonade Chekov held out. "I'm gonna hop into the shower immediately. That was a dick move, Kirk." He stalked off.

"He ees mad with you." Chekov looked at Kirk, who lay panting in the grass. "He did not help you up."

"Funny, how his face is still so pleasant looking," Kirk rubbed hands over his face and rolled to his feet until he was crouched and rose. He hopped on one foot while he shook the other one. "He took revenge, too. Bent my ankle beyond comfortable."

"Is from Asian descent, you never really loos zat." Chekov shrugged. "What made him mad?"

Kirk grinned up from between his legs while he stretched. "I shoved mud down the front of his pants."

"Do you ever stop being a two-year-old?" Uhura asked, who was sipping her own glass and had already changed into a fleece sweater that came up to her nose.

"Not really." He wiped a runny nose on his sleeve in front of her to demonstrate and took his glass form Scotty with a nod of thanks. After a long swallow, he wiped his soothed throat in satisfaction.

"Still feeling that cold, are ye?" Scotty put the back of his hand on Kirk's forehead. "No temperature."

"'Course not, we don't have the time."

Uhura snorted. "We've been working on this thing for years, Kirk, and will be for many more. You can take a day off to get better before you're moaning and delirious in bed for a week." She pointed at him. "You will change out of those clothes and take the laundry bag home, operate the washing machine, and take the rest of the day off."

He wrinkled his forehead. "Who's the big bad leader here?"

"Not you." Uhura took his glass. "Change and go home, Kirk."

He did not call her his mother, because that would have ended his life painfully.

/`/`/`/`/`

By the time he let himself into his house, a pale yellow number almost as dilapidated as Uhura's, he could add a beginning cough to his list of complaints.

He drank a bit of the cough syrup his neighbour was kind enough to give him, with an unnecessary hip-thrust and fluffing of bleached hair. He thanked her kindly and went away, biting his lip to hold in the comments he wished to make at her pout.

Several hours later, he found himself actually climbing the tree in his front yard after an idle thought on the effects of blood flow to the head in various positions.

His inhibitions had gone. He wondered where they went while he hung down from his legs. Wow, he'd last done this when he was eight. He hadn't had a drop of alcohol. Might've been the syrup, then. Funny thing, medicine.

He heard footsteps and opened his eyes to wide brown eyes in a pale face. Nice cheekbones. Weird eyebrows.

/'/'/'/'/'

When the transporter beam let Spock go, he took a few seconds to acclimatise.

For one breath, Spock opened his mind to his senses. The rise in humidity allowed him to stop hydration of his skin so the veins in his limbs could narrow and his core temperature was more easily preserved. His heart sped up six beats per minute. The rise in oxygen levels was beneficial to the higher burn of fuel in his body and the maintenance of his homeostasis. He would need to increase the intake of food by 12.9 percent.

The instant change of environment was still something he was learning to regulate. He had joined the _Seleya'_s crew on four missions, one for a more detailed starmapping of the territory around one of the Federation's new member planets. Some data could only be picked up by close-range scanners. The other three had taken him to inhabited worlds, all of them colder than Vulcan by a temperature average of 193 Chules.

To undergo an experience was to gather altogether different information than to study it in a report after the fact. The boy who had studied everything in earnest and as much detail as he could find, believing he could understand the world from that position, who had proved himself in the most difficult exam known to Vulcan and, indeed, the Federation, had disappeared. In his stead stood someone who could appreciate the visceral knowledge that came from devising and executing his own experiments, touching objects with his own hands and seeing a star's sunspots with his own eyes.

He had been deposited in a field.

As he took in the sight of his mother's planet of origin, he observed a startling diversity of flora. Between his feet alone grew five types of grass. He did not scan it, but his fingertips brushed the edge of the sweater that hid his tricorder, communicator and two phasers.

That he might be redirected if the materialisation security protocols detected a solid object at his coordinates was not out of the ordinary. That his destination was out of sight was highly irregular.

He saw a road in the distance. He followed it.

After three miles it brought him to a store. When he mentioned the settlement that had been listed as John Smith's place of residence in the file attached to his DNA profile, he was told to return in the direction he had come.

A systematic search of the town brought him nothing and he considered breaking the radio silence Sarek had ordered as soon as they entered the Sol system. He was only to contact him in case of succes or failure.

Questioning the locals proved more fruitful. In return for carrying food a female had collected from a local store, he was taken to her residence and received confirmation John Smith existed and a means of contacting him.

Since it had been four point seven harrowing hours since he had beamed down, Spock could perhaps be excused for not observing local rituals of politeness.

/`/`/`/`/`

He succeeded in connecting his communicator to a dismantled phone in an empty residence. He entered the identifying number after it showed he'd been connecting to a local rerouting centre.

"Hello?" a female voice on the other end of the line asked.

"Greetings. I am searching for a man by the name of John Smith," Spock said.

"Oh, go ride a donkey till the cows come home. I _am not his secretary." _Agitation coloured the voice.

"I see. Could you tell me where I might find him?"

"Oh fine, _fine! _Just tell me where you got this number so I know who to strangle."

Spock hesitated before deciding it seemed to be the only course of action in obtaining John Smith's location. Unfortunately, this information was lacking from the man's file. They had planned simply to beam him down close to the human. "I received this number from a Doctor Leonard McCoy, but he did not seem to be a malicious individual. Strangulation without sufficient cause seems inadvisable."

A growl could be heard, but no further death threats followed. "John _Smith _lives on Rosemary Drive. The number's 178." He thanked her for articulating the sentence slowly, clearly and precisely and ended the call.

He restored the machine he had pulled apart to its original state and set off to find the street.

/`/`/`/`/`

The first thought Spock had upon seeing a blonde human hanging upside-down from his knees from a branch of a Magnolia tree was, "I want that."

Or it would have been, had the burst of lust been verbal. It was produced by his hindbrain and immediately shunted aside in favour of the second thought, which was, "Illogical."

"Huh?" the human said, stared at Spock and forgot to clench his knees for a moment. He fell down. "Ow." He rubbed his head, but held up a hand when Spock attempted to approach him.

The human stood. He was unsteady. "Can I help you?"

The dust that flew up from the sleeves the human brushed with his hands made Spock sneeze. "Oh not you too," he said and offered Spock a scrap of fabric he used to wipe his face.

"I am searching for a man called John Smith."

The human threw his arms wide. "You found him."

"Ah, excellent. I am Spock." He offered his hand and it was shaken. He sensed willingness, but also a great deal of suspicion and dizziness. "Perhaps we could retire somewhere more private where you could sit down. You are not stable." Amusement flitted through the touch before the human retrieved his hand.

"Yeah...uh, it's kind of a mess inside, is the backyard alright?"

"It will suffice."

When the human was seated, he seemed more alert. "So, Spock." He drew out the final consonant. "Why were you looking for me?"

Spock settled into parade rest and clasped his hands at his back. The human was apparently easily amused, for his lips curled up again. "It's not a report you're giving me, you know."

"No. I have come to you because you are related to a woman my father met. Her name was Winona-" the change in the human's body language was drastic enough that Spock stopped speaking.

In two strides that belied his earlier wobbling, the human had approached him and torn off his beanie. He held it in his hand, lips drawn in a straight line and eyes as blank as a Vulcan's. "Pointed ears.You are an alien."

It seemed Winona Harolds had indeed remembered her encounter with Sarek and passed it on to her children. "I am. I have come to-"

"I am _not interested _in your reasons for coming over to Earth. I know what you did. You kidnapped her, subdued her and did something to her before dumping her back on Earth." He leaned in, the hatred emanating from him strongly enough to break through Spock's shield. "The only reason you're not dead yet is because you're not as green as the bastards that _killed my father." _

He flung the beanie back at Spock. "You're lucky I'm not armed and feeling merciful today, so leave, and never come back to Earth unless you want to end up at the business end of my gun."

Spock opened his mouth to attempt to reason with him.

"Leave!" The command was in the tone, in every line of the man's body and even in his unconscious mental projection.

Spock could appreciate why his father had asked him to recruit this man. It seemed he should have requested a more complete account of what had transpired during the meeting between his father and John Smith's mother.

He retreated until he was out of the backyard and in the street. He would make sure to leave the town before beaming back up. It seemed the humans were not ready to make contact with outworlders.

When he found himself away from the town, he walked into long rows of stalks of a local vegetable the humans grew, perpendicular to the road. Spock opened his communicator and hailed the _Seleya._

_/`/`/`/`/`_

When the alien was out of sight, Kirk gave into his screwed-up sense of balance and sat on his butt, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

He'd survived. He'd met an alien, looked it in the face and survived to tell the tale, not a scratch on him. It should count as an accomplishment.

Instead, Kirk was shocked and full of questions as to why someone from a different planet had come down, worn scruffy clothes, sought him out by his false name, and known he was Winona's son.

How had he even known where to find him.

Well... that was perhaps a question Uhura could find him an answer to. If he had left a trail behind, she could find it for him.

He rolled himself back to his feet.

His head hurt and was probably bleeding, but that was not an urgent problem, as long as he survived.

He went inside to grab a hoodie.

/`/`/`/`/`

Uhura heard the back door to her house open. Only one person she knew was rude enough to walk in without knocking. "I will kill you so slowly you will beg for death," she drawled in the honeyed voice that promised an eternity of sweet, sweet torture.

When he stepped from the kitchen into the living room, however, he had the face on of Lieutenant Kirk on a mission. She dropped the tablet she'd been clicking away on. "Sir?"

"Uhura, I need your talent in communications. Someone came to find me-"

"-yeah, I know, this guy called me-"

"WHAT!"

She swallowed. "He said he got the number from that doctor you pranked, Leonard McCoy, and I thought you were pulling someone else's leg."

He stood frozen, a dog at point, before he heaved a breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Okay, that makes things a lot simpler."

Only now did she notice the hoodie. "Are you cold?"

He shook his head. "Irrelevant. I need you to find the current location of Leonard McCoy." It was an order.

"Aye, sir." She retrieved her tablet and set to work. In two minutes, she'd found his profile and his schedule of the clinic. The security was minimal. She handed it to Kirk, who glanced it over to burn it into that agile brain of his and nodded.

"Alright. Inform the others of the possibility of a security breach and check everyone's tablets. Go to the bunker and wait for my sign. I'm going to talk to the doctor and see what comes out of it."

Uhura only stopped him long enough to ask who should secure his house. He told her to have Sulu go over there while Chekov secured his and Sulu's apartment.

/`/`/`/`/`

After Kirk had spoken to Leonard McCoy, he still felt restless. The dizziness had receded. He refused the doctor's offer of a lift home and ran several miles.

He walked the last block and almost felt good when he was searching for his keys. The sweat evaporating into the night air cooled him off pleasantly.

The last thing he expected was the alien sitting like lost puppy on his doorstep, beanie back in place on his head.


End file.
